YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. Political scientist Alexander Iskandaryan says the “Ohanyan-Raffi-Oskanian” bloc is using any occasion to accuse the leadership in pressuring them.

Iskandaryan was commenting on the bloc’s statement regarding the arrest of former military commander Samvel Babayan.

“Such statements were made even before Samvel Babayan’s arrest, saying the leadership is obstructing the campaigning, pressuring and so on”, Iskandaryan said. According to him, the bloc is actually trying to gain approval rating this way.

“On the other hand, in the actions of the bloc’s members it’s felt that they aren’t going to enter the parliament. All of them are saying that they will be active after the election. This means they don’t even hope to receive the minimum threshold for entering the parliament. Such cases happened a lot in the newly independent history - “I wasn’t elected, this means the election was rigged””, he said.

On March 22 the national security service said 3 people, including Samvel Babayan, were arrested amid an ongoing probe on the smuggling of an IGLA type surface-to-air missile system to Armenia.

The investigation revealed the smugglers, who acquired and transported the missile system, were acting according to an agreement and at the order of Samvel Babayan.